I have been “mistaken,” “misled,” “misrepresented,” and been “unaccountably in error,”
and am sorry if you have been offended

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Paul Krugman Channels Abe, Humblebrags

“… Japan never had the kind of employment and human disaster we’ve
experienced since 2008. Indeed, our policy response has been so inadequate that
I’ve suggested that American economists who used to be very harsh in their
condemnations of Japanese policy, a group that includes Ben Bernanke and, well,
me, visit Tokyo to apologize to the emperor. We have, after all, done even
worse.”

Paul Krugman has an op-ed that should be
appearing any time now on Prime Minister Abe’s FB page. Just one paragraph
should suffice to give you an idea of what it says about the fiscal-monetary
policy package.

“But Mr. Abe returned to office pledging to end Japan’s long
economic stagnation, and he has already taken steps orthodoxy says we mustn’t
take. And the early indications are that it’s going pretty well.”

But the quintessential Krugmanism here is the sequence that I
copied at the top. Of course Krugman, unlike Bernanke, had no role in the
policy response to the ongoing global financial crisis. It’s like Soichi
Ohya’s post-WW II ichioku souzange; by
sharing in the responsibility, h*He’s condemning the ones who have actually
been in charge.

Actually, I got my history totally wrong. It was Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni-no-miya and the effect, if not the intent, was more or less what you indicate here. I even managed to get it mixed up with ichioku so-hakuchika, a takeoff on PNH’s plea that Ohya coined in 1957 as a criticism of the dumbing down effect of television on the Japanese public. At the time, most Japanese watched television in the public bathhouses or at electric appliances storefronts. Sadly for Ohya, the TV-set buying binge just before the 1959 royal marriage made sure that television would be available at all hours of the day (and increasingly, late night and dawn) in every household.

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About Me

After graduation, Jun Okumura promptly entered what is now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and stayed in in its ecosystem most of his “adult” life. Along the way, he had pleasant stops in an assortment of Japanese quangos (Japangos?), overseas assignments and government agencies. After thirty years, though, it dawned on him that he had no aptitude whatsoever for administration and/or management. Armed with this epiphany, he went to the authorities and arranged an amicable separation; to come out, as it were. He is completely on his own IYKWIAS, but he and the METI folks remain “good friends.” He currently holds the titles of “visiting researcher” at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs (no, that MIGA) and counselor at a risk analysis firm that dares not speak its name. This gives him plenty of time to blog or make money on his own. His bank account says that he does too much of the first, and insists that he do more of what he calls “intellectual odd jobs”. He wants to be paid to write fulltime, or better, talk—where the easy money is—but that distinction has largely escaped him. He really should not be referring to himself in the third person; he is not that famous.